What have the artists said about the song?

Welch told CultureDeluxe that most of the sounds on this song, “came from a tiny Yamaha keyboard.” Also the percussion sound was “hands on the wall while hitting a drum underneath it at the same time and the beat was really accidental.” She added to BBC Newsbeat:

It was just a song that I did at my friend’s studio in Crystal Palace [south London]. We didn’t have any instruments and we were in a studio the size of a loo.

Welch told the NME January 10, 2010 that the song’s music video is her favorite one to date. She explained this was not only

because it was our first, but also because of the people involved. I just made it on a whim. We went down to the woods and we only had one camera. I got my dad to put a clown costume on and my friend’s nephew to dress up as the baby clown while we decorated the woods. Dog walkers gave us the weirdest looks. It was really fun.

What inspired Florence to write this song?

What has the media said about the song?

In 2018, NPR ranked this as the #17 greatest song by a female or nonbinary artist in the 21st century, saying:

It’s hard to imagine a more striking opening gambit than this miniature epic, the first song on Florence + the Machine’s debut album, Lungs. Remixing the baroque concept of Joanna Newsom and echoic aesthetic of Neko Case with older influences — 1960s girl groups, the heavy drama of Grace Slick, the sheer ambition of Zeppelin — the young U.K. band barreled onto the scene like the happiness Florence Welch sings about, which hits her ‘like a train on a track.’ That train gives way to the wilder imagery of horses bearing self-shattering news of recovery — ‘Here they come.’ Order likewise gives way to jubilation as musical elements that enter in sequence like train cars (harp, stomps, claps, drums, voices) gradually pile up. Into a tradition of women’s pop music often defined by longing and pain, the group delivered an unexpected and raucous encounter with joy.